Breaks the bubble (and makes you queasy)

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2005)

If the only reason you go to the movies is to see big explosions and lots of special effects, then The Island is the movie for you... unless, that is, you're prone to motion sickness.
The Island has plenty of explosions and nice special effects shots, but what it's missing is depth, a sense of reality, and a good steady cam. While shaky camera-work is an effective means of making the audience feel as if they are in the movie alongside the characters, The Island reaches greater heights of motion sickness inducing tremors than any movie since The Bourne Supremacy. I could ride a mechanical bull on a tiny boat in the middle of a stormy sea with no problems, but it only took a couple of minutes of The Island's ultra-close, bouncy camera-work to turn me three shades of green.
The film also suffers from a tragic lack of realism that makes it difficult to maintain a proper suspension of disbelief -- even for a sci-fi action flick. Each scene is more outrageous and unbelievable than the one before, culminating in a true bubble-breaker where the main characters fall 70 stories from the side of a building and walk away with barely a scratch. Action movies can get away with quite a bit -- we expect the heroes to be a bit larger than life -- but the things that the characters in The Island live through are simply a bit too much.
On the bright side, the acting is quite decent with the exception of a few unfortunate scenes. Sean Bean delivers another excellently sinister performance as the film's antagonist, and Djimon Hounsou is quite convincing as the ex-military security specialist on the trail of the escaped clones. The plot is also relatively solid, if somewhat predictable, though it fell somewhat short of exploring the themes of the film with any real depth.
In terms of Michael Bay's other films, I'd rank The Island somewhat below Bad Boys, but above Bad Boys II.